The ability to send and receive data over network connections has become a necessary and expected commodity of everyday life. Personal and business uses for data communication continue to grow almost daily, with the Internet becoming an integral part of our daily routine. With the advent of on-demand video and downloadable audio as well the increased number of new users placing demand on network service providers and enterprise customers, the need to provide increased speed and reliability for data transfer is an ongoing concern. As more people and businesses actually conduct transactions over public networks, virtual private networks, and intranets that use service provider facilities, service providers must continue to improve encryption procedures to insure that the transferred data cannot be recovered by hackers or other persons having improper motives.
One means of increasing data throughput is to compress the outgoing data packets before transmission on the network. Thus, the quantity of data traversing the network, i.e., the actual number of bits, is reduced while retaining the content of the data. Currently, to implement data compression and encryption methods, the service provider must purchase one piece of equipment, e.g., a compressor/decompressor, to perform the compression and a second, separate piece of equipment, e.g., an encryptor/decryptor, installed serially with the first piece of equipment, to perform the encryption. Each piece of equipment has its own associated power, memory, network interfaces, management, training, cabling and cost requirements. Typically, data received from a client computer is compressed by the compressor, then transmitted to the encryptor through at least one cable. Some measurable quantity of transmission line losses, delays, and noise/jitter problems are incurred by having to route the data through two separate devices, thereby diminishing the achievable data quality.
Additionally, as the need for speed increases, the number of available transport protocols, e.g., Ethernet, Ten Gigabit Ethernet, Synchronous Optical Networking (“SONET”), Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (“SDH”), etc., is also increasing. Thus, many service providers must install protocol converters to transform incoming data from one protocol to another.
Therefore, what is needed is a single, integrated device to perform independent compression and encryption of service provider or enterprise customer data regardless of protocol type.